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Emotional states influence bodily physiology, as exemplified in the top-down process by which anxiety causes faster beating of the heart^{, –}. However, whether an increased heart rate might itself induce anxiety or fear responses is unclear^{, , , , –}. Physiological theories of emotion, proposed over a century ago, have considered that in general, there could be an important and even dominant flow of information from the body to the brain. Here, to formally test this idea, we developed a noninvasive optogenetic pacemaker for precise, cell-type-specific control of cardiac rhythms of up to 900 beats per minute in freely moving mice, enabled by a wearable micro-LED harness and the systemic viral delivery of a potent pump-like channelrhodopsin. We found that optically evoked tachycardia potently enhanced anxiety-like behaviour, but crucially only in risky contexts, indicating that both central (brain) and peripheral (body …